


When the Force Demands

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: Return of the Padawan [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Force Visions, Pregnancy, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 16:32:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7691692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahsoka tried to let Anakin have his life, and ignore the Visions. But they were torturing her Skyguy, and <i>aliit</i> was more important than discovering who she was just then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Force Demands

**Author's Note:**

> We put a little more time into the _Revenge of the Sith_ story because of reasons. This also ignores the incident on Mandalore with Ahsoka's command.

Panic, terror, and phantom pain hammered through her mind where she was curled up in a cot-berth of an outbound freighter, knocking her out of meditation and to fully awake with her heart pounding within moments. She reached out with the Force, sweeping from her spot in the passenger deck outward, searching through the ship, looking for the person in such distress that it had cut through her shields. 

Most other passengers were sleeping peacefully. The awake members of the crew were going about their jobs with no haste and no panic... and there was no-one in the cargo holds, no-one sealed in an escape pod... nothing. There was nothing wrong on this ship, and yet her heart was still pounding from the wild burst of emotions.

She turned her focus inward, trying to determine what had shaken her so... and her eyes snapped wide open.

The bond should have been broken months ago. 

~~Master Skywalker should have broken it months ago.~~

She wasn't a Jedi any more. She wasn't supposed to still be connected to them at all. She wasn't welcome on any contested world, in any battlefield, anywhere the Jedi were (or even, for that matter, on Coruscant). 

Wherever her Skyguy -- no, not hers, couldn't be, he was Jedi still, no matter that he'd stood for her when no-one else would -- was, he'd be okay. Master Obi-Wan couldn't be too far away.

Wherever he was, he was _fine_ , she told herself again, and again. And besides, even if he wasn't, he wouldn't want her help, or even to see her. She knew _that_ for sure.

She rolled restlessly in the berth, grumbling to herself, as she tried to push the reactions away and make herself go to sleep. 

Asleep, she couldn't know she was worried about him. 

+++ 

She stepped off the freighter twenty hours later on a Mid-Rim world that hadn't, yet, had Seppie trouble, and tried to find herself something to do. 

A few hours later she was hip deep in working on an engine when the bond flared to that panicked life again. Fear, so much fear (for all that they called him the Hero With No Fear, she knew how much that was a lie), for... for _Padmé_? 

Yes, that was the taste of it. Not for himself -- there, there he _was_ fearless -- but for the Senator? 

Ahsoka's jaw ground as she warred with herself. 

He wouldn't want to see her, not unless she was coming back, and that she _could not_ do... but if anything happened to the Senator, it would be... it would be catastrophic. For any chance of peace, for ~~her Master~~ Skyguy's sanity, for... everything. 

But it wasn't as though she could get to them before whatever was happening was over. No one had ever figured out what some of the fantasy-holos called teleportation, after all. She wrenched at the stuck coupling with half her strength, and tried to convince herself she was right. 

+++ 

Three days and three more 'incidents' later, Ahsoka Tano gave up on fighting the Force and booked passage back to Coruscant. That was where Padmé should be, no matter where Skyguy's missions had probably taken him. 

+++

She knew as soon as she was on the landing strip of the mid-level Coruscant spaceport that she'd been wrong. Skyguy wasn't out with the 501st; he was here. He was on Coruscant, despite the war raging across a hundred systems. What in the _kriff_?

At least that would make finding him easier. On the same planet, with him not trying to hide himself, she could track Skyguy anywhere. 

...even to the Senatorial Apartments. 

Great, how was she supposed to get to him _there_?! On the other hand, there was far better than the Temple, where every Padawan and Initiate would report her in a heartbeat for being where she had no right to be. 

She shook her head, her lekku waving slightly, and sank into the Force, looking for her route. 

+++

The last step of that route was ridiculously easy, as soon as she engaged her brain. She had a variable-frequency comm, and the day she didn't know Artooey's band was the day they put her on a pyre --

\-- not that there would be a pyre for her, now. If she was lucky, she'd at least be properly cremated. She shook the dark thoughts away and fiddled with the comm until she could reach Artoo and get him to open the apartment for her. 

He took a little convincing, of course, but... he trusted her, and she slid inside easily. She was immediately glad she had, because the entire great suite roiled with her ~~Master~~ Skyguy's distress. 

Kriff, kriff, _kriff_ , the Senator was in there too (of course she was, it was _her bed_ they were in), so she couldn't just go wake him up!

Not physically, anyway. But she had the Force, and it very obviously wanted her here. She stretched out with it, whispering, //Wake up. Wake up, Skyguy...// 

Anakin kept hearing Padmé screaming in pain, in denial. All around, there was heat and fumes, and she was screaming… and then a voice was cutting across it all.

Skyguy?

No one called him that but _her_ , and she was gone; she'd left him, walked away when he'd believed in her --

\-- his eyes snapped open, and he looked at his exhausted wife beside him. That she could sleep through these episodes terrified him as much as the ~~dreams~~ visions themselves. He was trying to get his breath back… but then he felt it. He felt _her_. She really was here! That brought him to his feet, and he moved toward the living area of the apartment, leaving Padmé to her much-needed rest.

Where… ahh, there, in the dim light, he saw a gleam on her headdress, and he focused intently on her. Why was she here? What was the meaning of it?

_She left you! She betrayed you!_

The thoughts hardened his features as he spoke. "Making a habit of breaking into places now?"

"I didn't break in," Ahsoka replied, her jaw tipping up a little as she looked across at him in the dim light of a Coruscant night. She'd known he wouldn't want to see her, but she couldn't leave him like that, couldn't just let the pain ride him when the Force had dragged her back here. Did he have to glare at her so, though? "I asked Artooey to let me in." 

She padded closer, surprised to realize that she was taller against him than she had been when she left, but she was still looking up at him. "Good thing, too. That felt _awful_..." 

He felt his foundation shake, as he felt her concern for him. "It's just a dream," he protested, but the words were a lie on his tongue. He knew he had to find a way to fight this future. Could Ahsoka help him find it?

She had left him, but he'd fought for her. Would she repay that much at least?

"You don't believe that," Ahsoka told him, shaking her head as she moved a little closer, looking into his eyes as she did. "And it's not 'a dream' when it's six of them, Skyguy..." 

He shuddered, then his eyes flared wide and he made a grasping motion with both hands for a moment.

She knew? She knew what he'd been going through, and she was here?

"Ahsoka…" he breathed, his body strung tighter than on a three week campaign. "She's … Padmé keeps dying in my visions," he said, refusing to pretend anything other than the fact that he was with his wife, that Padmé's well-being meant the world to him. Ahsoka wasn't a Jedi anymore; she was his … friend? Yes, she was. She was here because of his visions; she had come back to him.

Ahsoka reached out, taking both of his hands in hers as he shuddered again, making a soft, worried noise as she did. He looked terrible, he was strung tighter than she'd seen him during their usual campaigns, why? "...the Senator dying, Skyguy? How?" 

He squeezed her hands, holding onto them as an anchor. She was his ~~padawan, need to protect her~~ friend, here to help him. She needed to know. "She's pregnant, Ahsoka. And I keep seeing her die, in childbirth. She… she can't leave me, 'Soka… she just can't! I have to save her! How can the galaxy take everything from me, and not even let me save her?!"

"She's -- " Ahsoka stared at him for a moment, caught by the first words, amazed by them, holding on to him as hard as he was clinging to her. "That's... oh, Skyguy, you're going to be a father?" 

The next bit of it... the horror of the idea of Padmé dying because she was pregnant... but they were on Coruscant. How could she possibly die in childbirth here? 

And the rest... the rest was horrifying for whole different reasons. That was her Master's love almost twisting up in him, threatening something dark... That for later. That for _later_. This now, protecting her Master and the coming child now. 

Anakin startled a little, almost as badly as the night Padmé had told him something wonderful had happened. After all, he hadn't heard it from anyone else, that he was the father of her child, and it made it even more sharply real to him.

"Yes," he said. "She's having my baby," he said, a whisper in the still room as he contemplated that. He felt even more protective, more afraid, as he accepted her validation of his place in the child's life. "I have to help her, Snips… I can't let her die. She shouldn't even be pregnant, because we're not idiots. We were supposed to get through this war and then try for a family. But…" He took his hands back, spreading them wide in helplessness. It had to be the Force, he realized. He put his hands back out to her though, needing that contact.

She could feel that sudden shift, blinked at him for it and reached to get hold of his hands again. Even as she did, she moved closer into his space, leaning her head forward towards his chest. "Okay, Skyguy... it's okay," she said, easy and gentle as she could make her voice be. "And of course you're not idiots. You're two of the smartest people I know." 

Praising Skyguy had never gone amiss, and the Senator was so smart, so brave... "Sit down with me? Tell me what you're seeing?

"Skyguy. I'm not gonna let anything happen to her, you've gotta know that..." 

_They are not your friends, Anakin. You know they envy you, resent you for being uniquely gifted._

The intruding thought felt wrong, though, because Ahsoka had come back to him. She had had every reason to leave, to find her own way, and yet she was here, holding his hands, being so concerned. He could feel her… Force, but she was there in his mind, a bundle of concern and faith in him.

"It's never clear. I can't tell where she is. I hear her screaming, sometimes it's words, protesting. Sometimes just such pain and fear. And… she's dead. I feel her die." His words came slowly, as he tried to fully show the dream to Ahsoka in his mind, sharing it with her as gently as he was capable of.

She leaned into the Force to see, to catch hold of that vision and see it, understand if she could... and it washed into her. All of her Skyguy's pain and fear, the agony she could feel the Senator in, the screams echoing in his/her ears. She heard herself make a quiet, horrified noise, and slid her hands from his to run up his arms, cup behind his shoulders and hold on to him. 

Living with that, over and over again... no wonder he was wound so tight! 

But why would Padmé be in danger here? How could she be? This was the heart of the Republic itself. Not even the twilighters died having children here -- but she knew, somehow, that Skyguy was seeing a truth. She didn't doubt that at all. 

"Not gonna let that happen," Ahsoka told him aloud, and across the bond, putting all of her will into it. "You won't, and I won't." 

"But how? Master Yoda tells me I should rejoice that the person has become one with the Force!" Anakin snarled, all his anger and resentment boiling just under the surface of their connection. He closed his eyes, then leaned his forehead carefully between her montrals, shaking in her hold. "I can't lose her, Ahsoka. I just can't."

He'd lost his mother, he'd lost the imposing Jedi that had felt like a father to him after just hours of being in his presence, he'd lost so many men he had cared about… and he'd never had Obi-Wan, not truly. Or that's what it felt like now, as their lives had torn them further apart than ever.

"Yoda was also willing to believe that _I_ would attack the Temple," Ahsoka pointed out, letting her anger and hurt over that show, now. He felt so alone, so isolated... he needed to know he wasn't. He needed to know he wasn't the only one hurting and angry. She hadn't had any choice but to leave the people she couldn't trust... but her Skyguy, him she could always trust. "Sometimes he's wrong. Shh.... shh, Skyguy, I know... I know. 

"You love her so much it hurts just to touch it around the edges," she told him, admitting what she'd never been willing to say when she was his Padawan. But she wasn't that now, she wasn't a Jedi, and it was true. "I know you can't... and we're not. going. to." 

He slowly slid his arms around her, holding on, resting his head against hers, and let himself fall into that promise. At least for tonight, it could guard him, let him feel like he would win against death itself. Ahsoka, his Snips, would stand with him, no matter what.

"She'll get you papers, attaching you to her staff," he decided, not even needing to ask Padmé first. "And I… when I go to the Temple next, I'll bring you your lightsabers, just in case. I know… I know they think you shouldn't have them, but I want her safe. Or I can get parts, for you to build new ones, if you prefer. You're different now, and maybe you do need new crystals attuned to who you are now."

He was breathing a little easier, putting a plan together. It was only half a plan, but that was what he worked best from. If a piece of scum like Dooku, or Grievous, could carry sabers, so would she!

Dooku…

No, he wasn't going to talk about that. It needed to stay buried.

Ahsoka nodded at the first bit -- Padmé would do anything that would keep Skyguy from being afraid, after all -- and then her eyes widened at that. Her lightsabers? 

"I -- I thought you would have -- " she couldn't quite make herself say 'disassembled them'. "No, faster is better. I can make new ones later." 

What... what had that last been? Flare of shame/hate/guilt.... "Master? What's happened?" 

Master? _Master?!_ "Don't call me that, Snips. Ever." His voice was hard on that point. "You're my friend, not a --" Not a slave, his heart said, even as the bitterness over all the machinations behind his lack of ascension to the rank. Whoever heard of a Knight on the Council? How much could he fix his own problems, if he just had the access a Master had to the entire Archives, including the most ancient Holocrons? "Just don't call me that.

"And it's nothing. You know what this war does to us all, pushing us harder down paths we don't want. So just … it's nothing." He didn't let go of her, though, as he closed his eyes, resting against her. 

He'd traded one set of chains for another when he had abandoned his mother. Maybe things would have been different under Master Jinn… but maybe not.

"Shh... okay, Skyguy. Okay. Okay. ...I might slip, you know; I got awful used to it, but I'll -- " /there is no try -- oh, to the hells with Yoda!/ "-- remember. And make sure I don't." 

She cuddled against him, feeling all of his warmth, the steady beat of his heart. It was slowing down a little, settling... that was good. That was very good. When he was afraid like this, he couldn't think clearly. Well, neither could she, when she was scared. "...you wouldn't feel like that for 'nothing', big guy. I'm here for you. _Just_ for you, and Padmé." 

"Me? And her?" He swallowed hard at that declaration. That kind of loyalty… only the 501st gave that to him, and they had as little choice as any clone did, another kriffing sign of their slavery. "Okay, Snips… you're here, You're my friend. I can _trust_ you." But if he told her about Dooku… and he remembered how fierce she had been, how many times she had been counseled away from vengeance in the war effort. "Not tonight. Tonight, let me see hope."

She nodded against his chest, keeping hold of him, humming a low lullaby, deep in her throat, for him. "We'll keep her safe, Skyguy. We will. We'll figure out what's going on with this, and how to stop it. 

"I might not be _much_ of a healer, but I can get a healthy, strong woman through childbirth." 

That startled him again; if Ahsoka was with Padmé, that was Force-healing available to her. Anakin breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Okay, we can do this, Snips." He leaned back to look at her, his face a lot smoother… but showing the ravages of so little rest. "Stay close?" he asked, meaning to stretch out on the couch, but afraid she'd vanish if he couldn't touch her.

"..oh, yeah, Skyguy, I totally hauled myself from the other end of the Parlemian Route just to disappear on you," she told him, gently teasing in response to that fear she could taste almost like it was her own, still tucked to him. "Of course I'll stay close. But if you snore I'm hitting you with a pillow." 

"You're the snorer, no matter how much you blamed it on other people." Normally Rex, but Rex… Rex was a sore subject right now.

"Whatever," she answered him, soft, and started tugging him back towards the couch, already knowing that was where he wanted to be. Be it with his head against her leg as she took up the corner of the couch, or her half draped over one of his legs while he stretched out, it didn't matter. 

She was back with Skyguy, and she was going to keep them -- all three of them -- safe.


End file.
